Jayajit Chakraborty

Jayajit Chakraborty is a Professor and Mellichamp Chair in Racial Environmental Justice at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology and the Founding Director of the Socio-Environmental & Geospatial Analysis Lab at the University of Texas, El Paso. He has also been a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida) and a visiting scholar in the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). He has a M.S. in Urban & Regional Planning and Ph.D. in Geography, both from the University of Iowa.

Dr. Chakraborty currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee on Utilizing Advanced Environmental Health and Geospatial Data and Technologies to Inform Community Investment and coauthored a NASEM study report on Constructing Valid Geospatial Tools for Environmental Justice. He is also serving as a member of the Community Health & Environmental Research Initiatives Research Committee of the Health Effects Institute (HEI). Dr. Chakraborty recently served as member of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board, Work Group for Review of Science Supporting EPA Decisions, and the inaugural EPA Environmental Justice Science Committee. He also chaired the Scientific Review Panel for the EPA's EJScreen Mapping & Screening Tool and served as a lead discussant on the EPA Environmental Justice Science & Analysis Review Panel. He currently serves on the editorial board of several journals, including Environmental Justice and Environment, Development & Sustainability.

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As a broadly trained social scientist, Dr. Chakraborty’s research interests encompass a wide range of concerns related to the social dimensions of environmental and climate change, with an emphasis on environmental justice and community vulnerability to hazards and disasters. His scholarship has examined environmental and social inequalities at multiple geographic scales in the US, US-Mexico border, Australia, and India. His research utilizes a variety of methods, including applications of GIS and spatial statistical techniques, as well as social surveys and mixed methods approaches.

Dr. Chakraborty has published more than 4 books and 120 articles/chapters, including The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice and a chapter for the US Government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5). He has been a principal/co-principal investigator for over 30 sponsored projects, which include grants awarded by the US EPA, US National Science Foundation (NSF), US Department of Transportation, US Department of Treasury, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, American Association of Geographers, Australian Research Council, and other agencies. Dr. Chakraborty was also a recipient of the University of Texas System Faculty STARs Award and the NSF Geospatial Fellowship for Advancing COVID-19 Research and Education.